Online art stores are very common on the internet. The common thing for artists to do is sign up for one of the many online stores, such as Etsy, Zazzle, Fine Art America and Redbubble. I’ve posted artworks at these and other services, but sales have honestly been few and far in between.

The main problem with these and other websites is that I am competing with thousands of other artists. All the websites look the same!

There are customizations that can be made, such as colors and banner placements, but the website still looks basically the same as all the others.

The other problem deals with the buyer’s experience. There are many collectors who shy away from such sites, and would rather buy direct from the artist. They see the artist’s online store as a sign that the artist is established.

Take a look at Iris Scott’s website as an example. Before she had this website, she had a free one on Weebly. This one undoubtedly helped her in the early part of her career, but as her print sales grew through her site and Facebook, she saw the need for a functional online store with shopping cart. This undoubtedly simplified things for her, and provided a place for regular and new buyers to easily buy her artwork.

Now, if you were to hire a designer and programmer to create such a site, this could easily cost thousands of dollars. Such a personalized online store has been out of reach for the vast majority of online artists – until now!

Webydo has recently partnered with Ecwid, an e-commerce solution for websites. (learn more about Webydo in this post: Designing Websites). What this means is that an entire online store can be created using the Webydo platform, without the need to hire a web designer.

The best thing about Ecwid is that they have no transaction fee. Nothing will be added to items sold. All the plans, even the free one (which offers 10 listings for free!), offers unlimited storage and bandwidth. Ecwid also has a Facebook app for adding the shopping cart directly in a Facebook page, and more than 40,000 Facebook pages are using it.

What follows is a short tutorial for adding the Ecwid shopping cart to a Webydo website.

How to Add a Shopping Cart to an Art Website

First, signup for a free account at Ecwid. This is an app for adding an online store to any existing website. You can begin building your online store, or leave it for later by moving to the next step.

Begin a new site, and at the top of the website editor, you will see the Widget button. Click this to open the widget menu at the top. Here you will see options for adding an iFrame, HTML or Ecwid store widget.

Hit the Ecwid store option. You can either enter the ID for a pre-existing Ecwid store (created in step 1), or click Manage Store to create a new one. This will take you to a screen to signup with Ecwid (if you haven’t signed up yet), which is free for 10 items.

Hit the “Create new Ecwid account” button, fill in your details, then click Register. Make sure to go to your email account and find the email including a validation link before moving on.

Store Dashboard

Here you can add products and categories to your online store.

I may provide a more thorough explanation of the Ecwid store in an upcoming post.

If you have any questions about Webydo or Ecwid, feel free to comment below.